Objects in the Mirror Still Exist

The floor tilted.

The refrigerator roared louder

than any airport I’d just walked through.

Suitcases slouched like they’d grown roots.

The bed smelled wrong,

like someone else had borrowed my sleep.

The house tilted in its silence,

as if it wanted me to apologize

for leaving it behind.

***

But the body keeps performing

even when the stage is gone.

The theater emptied,

but my legs still hummed choreography,

palms itched for the pull of curtains.

The mattress creaked like applause.

The silence was thick with missing voices,

each one rehearsing itself

in the corners of my chest.

***

Then there’s the kind of ending

no one applauds.

The desk was gone,

but my fingers kept typing anyway.

The phone sat dumb and heavy,

its silence a dial tone stuck in my ears.

The floor leaned wrong,

like it missed the pattern of footsteps

marching across it.

***

After some collapses

the body just flickers.

Lungs sagged like torn curtains.

Skin buzzed like bad wiring

in a haunted house.

The room stuttered—

a flicker in the system,

the floor tilting with me.

Silence crawled into my mouth

and stayed.

***

So I jumped.

Because I could.

Because I had to.

When my feet left the platform,

the sky tore open,

wind chewing every syllable.

For a second my body was weightless,

history slipping off me like a coat.

I wanted to believe

I left it behind.

***

But gravity remembers.

The table still remembers his elbow.

Chairs sit crooked

from the way he leaned.

I walk through the rooms

and the walls bend toward me,

like they’re waiting for someone else.

Silence presses into my core.

It doesn’t sound like nothing.

It sounds like falling forever.